


two out of three

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Episode: s01e13 T.R.A.C.K.S., Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4313604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simmons wants a second opinion on her cover identity, Grant just wants to eat breakfast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two out of three

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the revelation that Jemma wears a skirt in T.R.A.C.K.S.

The Bus has its routines, for which Grant is grateful. May’s nine a.m. tai chi means he doesn’t have to drag Skye out of bed - she’s too afraid of getting her ass kicked for interrupting May to sleep in that late. Weekly game nights give him a great opportunity to reinforce his cover. His early mornings mean he gets to avoid just about everyone for the first hour of the day. Everyone but Simmons, who is somehow always up at the same time he is, even if she spent half the night dissecting something.

That’s not so bad though. Simmons may be a morning person, but she’s a respectful morning person. She keeps her perky comments to a pleasant, “good morning, sleep well?” that never expects a response and has learned his standing breakfast order, so she always has it waiting for him. It’s an easy start to the day before the others wake up and things start getting annoying.

Usually.

This morning there’s no “good morning,” no “sleep well?” There _is_ his breakfast, but there’s also a tablet in Simmons’ hands and a nervous look on her face.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind helping me with something,” she asks, doing that thing where her teeth tug at her lower lip. It goes without saying that she’s asking now because there’s no one around to overhear. If she were anyone else, he’d wonder if she were up to something SHIELD shouldn’t know about, but this is _Simmons_. Helping Skye hack the Hub has probably covered her rule breaking for the next decade.

“What d’you need?” he sighs, managing to sound at least not completely annoyed.

She grins and begins tapping at her tablet. “I realized after that disastrous incident with Agent Sitwell-”

Grant chokes on his juice. She shoots him a sour expression and it’s one of the rare occasions his cover means letting a team member think the worst of him. Truth is, he’s laughing at the reminder that Sitwell let himself get taken down by tiny, untrained Jemma Simmons. Out of the loop as he is, Grant hasn’t seen any of the ribbing Sitwell’s no doubt enduring from his fellow HYDRA agents from that episode, but Grant _does_ know he transferred to the Triskelion just to be closer to the Avengers and out of danger of seeing Simmons again.

“ _I realized_ ,” Simmons continues coolly, “that my skills in spur of the moment subterfuge are severely lacking, so I’ve been preparing.”

“'Preparing'?” Grant echoes. How the hell is she preparing? What is she even preparing _for_? It’s not like Hand’s gonna pull a stunt like that again and Simmons isn’t the type to go breaking into anything.

She nods eagerly. “I’ve prepared several adaptable scripts for sudden moments such as that one, as well as several cover identities for myself. One of these, I believe, will be suitable for our upcoming mission in Italy. But I’d like your opinion on it as well as on a few of the particulars.”

She slides the tablet across the counter, expecting him to take a look.

“'Cover identities'?” he asks instead. “' _Several'?_ ”

She blinks and gives the tablet a nudge with her finger. “Yes?”

He looks down, less because he actually means to than because he just can’t look at that earnest face anymore. She’s got a _very detailed_ character history written out (she won the second grade spelling bee? Who even cares?!) including a family tree that goes back _three generations_.

“Do you have this much for all of them?” he asks, because he just can’t help himself.

“Of course.”

“Why do you even think you _need_ all of this? The undercover stuff is my job.”

“Yes, but we’re a _field_ team. We all have to wear multiple hats. And, as our upcoming mission clearly proves, the undercover stuff is not your job alone.”

He braces his palms against the edge of the counter, spreading them wide so he can loom a little over her. “You’re avoiding the question, Simmons.” Which is a solid tactic for escaping suspicion; it’d be encouraging if he wasn’t sure she was doing it by accident.

She scowls at him, proving his theory (if she meant to avoid it, she’d be embarrassed). “You, actually. You were giving Skye that speech a few weeks ago about how a specialist accumulates multiple cover identities during their career and might be forced to fall back on any one of them at any time.”

It’s a near exact quote of what he said to Skye, and it totally misses the point. “I meant we get them on _missions_. I’ve got so many because I’ve had to be a lot of different people. SHIELD gives me someone who fits their bill and I become that person. I don’t plot it all out beforehand. I know that Rene is allergic to shellfish because I needed to get out of that restaurant in the next five minutes or die. I know that Frank’s gonna be married for eight years next April because the guy he needed to make friends with was an adulterer and felt more comfortable talking to another adulterer. Jack got shot in the thigh in Columbia because - well, because I got shot in the thigh in Russia and I had to explain the scar, but still, the point is you can’t plan everything out. That’s not how things work in the field.”

Simmons’ eyes are downcast, fixed on the tablet she’s got framed between her hands. “I know that,” she says softly. “I was only trying to make it work for _me_.”

He’s screwed it up. She came to him for help - she _trusted_ him enough to come to him when she didn’t want the others to know about this - and he blew it. He runs his hand through his hair, trying to figure a way out of this. Just straight asking what she wanted help with now is only gonna look like the lame attempt at apology it is, so that’s out.

She said she wanted his opinion on the particulars, he’ll have to find a way to ease into that.

He pushes back from the counter, putting a little more space between them and giving her a better view of him. “It’s not just about names or dates or facts,” he says, drawing up memories of an archeological dig sight in China and the man looking to use the unearthed artifacts to quietly move some more modern merchandise. He paces. His hands don’t _wring_ exactly, but they move a lot. Palms turn against each other, fingers lace and unlace while he talks. “It’s about _being_ that other person, becoming someone else in every way that matters.”

Her head’s still bent, but he’s got her attention. Her brows are furrowing and he can just see the beginnings of her frown. She’s concerned though, not enlightened. He decides to make it a little more obvious.

He catches himself against the counter, coming forward so suddenly she jumps. “It’s the little things,” he says with a broad smile, made broader at her expression. He’s been waiting for the excuse to match her accent ever since she critiqued his impersonation of _himself_. It goes well with the playboy he was for an afternoon in Spain two years back; Luke didn’t say much at the time, didn’t really have to to get what Grant needed, but he made up for it with long, assessing looks and calculated invasions of personal space. He draws slow circles on the back of Simmons’ hand on the counter. “Mannerisms. The way you move your body. The way you look at another person.” His eyes drop from hers to her mouth and then to the movement of her throat. “It all matters when you go undercover.”

There’s a flush moving up her neck and he thinks maybe he should dial it back before he takes this further than he means. He straightens, bringing his hand back to his own side of the counter, and lets his smile fade to its normal, practically-not-there levels.

“But you won’t need any of that,” he says in his own voice.

The shift seems to startle Simmons back to reality. She fidgets, stepping away and holding the tablet to her chest like a shield.

“All you need for this mission is to sit on a train with Coulson for a few hours and find an excuse to spill something all over our bad guy. Tripping is good,” he adds, figuring she might need a little help keeping it reasonable.

“Oh, yes,” she says, still sounding a little breathless. He tries not to be proud of that. Not _hard_ , but he does try.

“So was there anything you still needed help with?” he asks, keeping his tone and body language open. He doesn’t wanna leave her feeling self-conscious again.

She takes the excuse to look down at her tablet, scrolling through her notes. “Um, well, I- oh!” She steps forward and again sets the tablet down between them, turning it so he can see. “Wardrobe,” she says, her fluster gone. “I don’t want to walk around looking like a SHIELD agent or even a scientist. I’m a daughter on vacation with her father and I should look like it, so which do you think is the most unassuming?”

“Simmons…” He flips through the first few pre-prepared outfits she’s got laid out, mostly to kill time while he thinks. Telling her she always looks unassuming and innocent is probably gonna undo all his hard work. Honestly, there's not much improvement to be made on what she normally wears. She could throw on a blouse instead of her collared shirts and she’d be fine. He decides, on a whim, to go back two outfits and choose whichever one that was - it really doesn’t make any difference - but his finger stalls at the next one.

It's a dress. Short. Even on Simmons it'll fall above her knees.

Grant’s always been a fan of legs. Skye in that pink number she wore to Quinn’s party? He was really glad for the life or death peril they were in to keep him focused, otherwise he might’ve had a problem. As it was, that dress - and what it left uncovered - has featured in a few of his dreams in the months since. And, while May doesn’t show hers off, he makes the most of the little time he gets to see them.

It’s crass and underhanded, but suddenly Grant really, _really_ wants to make it a hat trick. And Simmons did just literally  _hand_ him the option to. Can he really be blamed?

“This one,” he says, and if he says it a hair too quick, he trusts Simmons not to have the sense to realize. “The dress. It’ll make you look younger, innocent, but not in a secretly dangerous way.”

She taps the screen, presumably marking the outfit for later, and smiles at him. “Thank you, Ward. I do appreciate it.”

She grabs her last slice of toast (reminding him he's hardly touched his breakfast; it’s probably gone cold) and heads for the stairs with a swing in her step. He unapologetically watches her go, and hopes she’s this energetic when they’re on the mission.


End file.
